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With The Martian, director Ridley Scott has finally found a story worthy of his filmmaking talent. Matt Damon stars as Mark Watney, Mars’s most optimistic botanist, who is abandoned on the planet by his fellow astronauts, believing him dead. Isolated, wounded, rapidly depleting his supplies, and unable to contact Earth, Watney is faced with an impossible task: he has to MacGyver together a plan for survival on a planet with no food or oxygen–all in a way that doesn’t feel hopelessly contrived. And boy, does he rise to the occasion! Damon’s superb performance and Scott’s expert handling of the subject material make The Martian not just one of the best films of 2015, but the most fun movie-going experience I’ve had all year.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dearie me. I wanted a horror film, and for my sins, they gave me one. Of course, in this case the word “horror” has to carry almost tangible sarcastic connotations. The horror genre doesn’t need defending, obviously—but to call this unmitigated piece of shit a horror film is nothing but a cruel charade. Still, you can’t say it’s off message though: it’s certainly psychologically and emotionally painful for the audience to sit through.

This week on High and Low, we cover the filmography of one of the most talked about and beloved directors of the last 20 years, Paul Thomas Anderson.

Thoughts or opinions about the podcast? Want to share your favorite/ least favorite Paul Thomas Anderson films with us? Feel free to comment, follow us on twitter at Simply_Film, or emails us at simplyfilmreviews@gmail.com!

After last year’s Oscar season, I was so sick of biopics I wanted to puke. But for every Unbroken, and American Sniper, there’s a film like Frida waiting just around the corner, or in this case, just around the Netflix instant streaming side-scrolling thing. Frida—as in Frida Kahlo—manages to hit that biographical sweet spot by being both surprisingly informative and hugely entertaining in its own right.

Black Mass is a film about impressions, though none but Depp’s “Whitey” Bulger are particularly good. I’m not just talking about the overall poor quality of the Boston accents in this film, particularly Cumberbatch, who despite his best effort, is unable to conceal his identity as a Brit for more than a few words at a time. Black Mass as a whole is a sleepy, overly self-serious impression of a Scorsese-style gangster flick, with neither the style nor substance it needs to tell the bizarre and fantastic story of Bulger’s dealings with the FBI. Instead, the film is a insipid slog through the events of Bulger’s life, and seems completely disinterested in making anything other than a regurgitation of the same material covered in other, better gangster films.

Now that the summer blockbuster season has come to a close, it is only a matter of time before the Cannes winner and Oscar hopefully start cropping up in theaters. In anticipation for this, I have put together a list of some of my most anticipated films, and because I am writing for the internet, I have put my choices into a numbered list rather than write them out in no particular order. Links to all of these films can be found in the the comments section.

#6. The Lobster – Yorgos Lanthimos

After receiving generally positive reviews, and even winning the Jury Prize during its stint at the Cannes Film Festival this year, The Lobster kicks off this list at number six. An absurdist comedy from the director of Dogtooth, The Lobster tells of a world where if you become single, you are rounded up and sent to a resort, where you have 45 days to fall in love with someone or you will be turned into an animal – though you do have the benefit of choosing which animal it is. The film stars Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and John C. Reilly, in what promises to be one of the best dark comedies, or even comedies, of the year.

#5. The Danish Girl – Tom Hooper

Though I will concede that in many ways, this film looks like more of an attempt to win Academy Awards than an actual film, I will watch literally anything Tom Hooper directs. His films have such a grand theatricality to them, his style seems to run in stark opposition to the cinema-verite school of thought, and the result is tremendous. The Danish Girl stars last years Best Actor winner Eddie Redmayne in this biopic of the first man ever to undergo gender reassignment surgery.

#4. Pawn Sacrifice – Edward Zwick

At the height of the Cold War, Tobey Maguire and Liev Schreiber face off as Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, the two best chess players in the world. The film seems to focus heavily on Fischer and his psyche, promising to dive into the complex yet mentally fragile man who was once the greatest Grand Master in the world. Hopefully, this marks a star turn for Maguire, where he can finally step up to the plate and become a viable star for similar prestige films.

#3. The Walk – Robert Zemeckis

Cheesy and simple as they sometimes may be, I love Zemeckis films, and from the look of the trailer The Walk will be no exception. A narrative film alternative to Man on Wire, The Walk stars Joseph Gordon Levitt as Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who made global news by spending hours on a wire he set up between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The trailer frames this film like it would a slick heist thriller, and I am certainly sold.

#2. The Revenant – Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

With Birdman sitting pretty at the top of my favorite films of 2014, how could I not include Inarritu’s next film on this list. The trailer keeps many of the plot details intentionally hidden, but instead advertises a feeling tense beauty as Leonardo DiCaprio fights for his life across gorgeous American landscapes. Though I am keeping expectations reasonable as it will be hard to follow such a tremendous previous film, The Revenant will likely be another hit for Inarritu.

#1. Sicario – Denis Villeneuve

Honestly there is nothing to say about this movie that hasn’t already been said. It looks like an incredibly intense and emotional thriller about the war on drug cartels in Mexico from a director who has already proved himself to be a tremendous filmmaker. Prisoners was a great film, but if Sicario delivers the film that the trailers promise, it could well be the best film of the year.

If you are an admirer of Francis Ford Coppola’s work, watching The Cotton Club may be a strangely familiar experience. It hits all the beats one expects it to hit, and characters and even entire scenes appear on screen for what feels like a second time, even on your first viewing. There would be a strong argument that this film plagiarized directly from The Godfather if Coppola had not made both films. Iconic sequences such as the shooting of Corleone, and the newspaper montage scene that follows exist within this film in an almost copy and paste fashion. The films are about the same types of people, and feature many of the same central themes. The Cotton Club should just be a inferior rip off of The Godfather, but Coppola is such a deft filmmaker that is difficult to care that we have seen much of what this film has to offer before.

Despite the similarities, there are reasons to watch this film instead of simply re-watching The Godfather. Coppola is a true master of lighting within his films, and The Cotton Club is among the best examples of this. This film draws heavily from Noir style lighting and framing, offering up some excellent shots of the central protagonist and others paralleled with long, well defined cast shadows. Coppola’s use of cast shadows from blinds, curtains, and various other materials on shots of the actors give this film a classical Hollywood feel, despite this being a film from the 80’s.

The Cotton Club centers around a Jazz club in Harlem, sharing the same name as the film, and tells intertwining stories relating to the club, though the film primarily focuses on local trumpet player Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere). Dwyer’s life takes a sharp turn at the start of the film when he inadvertently saves the life of Dutch Schultz, a mob kingpin who takes Dwyer under his payroll to repay the favor. However, things become complicated when Dwyer becomes sexually involved with the Dutchman’s girlfriend. If this were all the film is about, it could be considered one of Coppola’s best works. Unfortunately, The Cotton Club is plagued by a seemingly endless number of subplots, ranging from Dwyer’s brother’s tradition to a life of crime, to separate stories related to race and class, as well as a romantic arch plot thrown in. It is a little hard to process everything at going on, but this is perhaps the only legitimate criticism I have of the film. The acting is all top notch, even though Diane Lane won a Golden Raspberry Award for her performance in the film – something that is seemly incomprehensible compared to the caliber of acting associated with contemporary winners of this honor. The Cotton Club isn’t quite a perfect film, though it is hard to compete with some of his other works. That said, it is still a very competent and enjoyable movie, well worth a watch for any fans of his other works.